Upgrade Your Taco Night With Canned Fish And Never Look Back

Fish tacos are a classic dish made famous in Baja California, Mexico, home of the iconic Baja-style fish taco, typically featuring fried fish, shredded red cabbage, and either lime crema or creamy chipotle sauce. However, frying or grilling the seafood takes time and skill to prepare correctly, and fresh fish only lasts a couple of days at most in the fridge. For a convenient and surprisingly satisfying alternative that will rescue your Taco Tuesday (or whichever day you feel like eating tacos), turn to the canned fish in your pantry.

The fish most commonly used for tacos are often on the subtler side, taking a backseat to rest of the dish's bolder flavors. Canned seafood is just as versatile.

Tinned fish is also precooked, making preparation a breeze since there's no worrying about over- or undercooking or your fish sticking to the grill. You can warm up tinned fish if you like, but there's no need. Plus, the taste of the canned stuff compared to a fresh catch can work to your advantage: While some cans are packed with springwater, other tins feature an array of additional ingredients like olive oil that help boost your fish taco's flavor.

While any kind of fish is fair game when it comes to making tacos, the most popular versions typically feature white fish, which is lean and mild compared to fattier "blue fish" species like tuna or oilier, pinker fish like salmon. Sea bass, mahi-mahi, halibut, tilapia, and codfish are all common fresh white fish used in tacos. Cod in particular takes well to canning and works great here: It's sweet, not so "fishy" tasting, and it flakes apart easily. Tinned codfish is also already sliced long and flat, so it's fairly easy to slide the filleta right into your tortillas.

Feel free to whip up fish tacos with bluer or redder fish instead, even it's not in the traditional Baja style. You don't have to fry canned fish (although you can absolutely beer batter them if you want to add extra crunch). Canned sardines make particularly excellent fish tacos. They're also long and flat — perfectly suited to the shape of tacos. Plus, they pair perfectly with Baja-style ingredients and cilantro. Sardines taste have a briny and fairly salty taste, but they're not so bold that they'll throw off the balance of the chipotle or cilantro, and fairly meaty despite also being flaky. Oilier canned salmon can add a buttery quality to your tacos. Mussels tacos are also delicious but the fresh ones require lots of tedious shelling. If you buy them canned, the hardest part will be wrestling with the pull tab.

Depending on which canned fish you purchase, you might be sitting on a flavor goldmine. Since the flavors your seafood is canned with will end up in the background of your tacos, you can adjust your garnishes and condiments accordingly.

You may see canned white fish less often than tuna or sardines, but all of them are available canned in extra virgin olive oil, which give them a pleasant pungency and extra richness. Some brands include lemon, which you'd be squeezing onto your tacos anyway (opt for a squeeze of lime instead in this case to add another dimension of citrusy zing). Canned mackerel may come smoked, which you can enhance with a salsa that includes chipotles, which are smoked jalapeños. Many brands also spice up canned fish with chiles or flavor them with silky sweet peppers. All of these variations are essentially ways of pre-seasoning the fish, and they elevate your taco's flavor.

Canned tuna is typically sold fairly plain. This can be handy if you only want a simple fish taco which can be prepared quickly, and it's easy to season it with chiles or garlic powder. Skipjack and white tuna (which is albacore, and not technically "white fish") may come with no extra additives besides water and a little salt — Starkist sells cans with water and cans with soybean-based vegetable oil. If you only have a plainer variety of canned tuna, you'll want to be bolder with your seasonings.